


Just a Touch

by hudders-and-hiddles (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies, Character Death, Flirting, M/M, Magical Realism, POV Alternating, Sherlock can bring things back from the dead by touching them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock discovers that he can bring things (including people) back from the dead with just one touch, but of course there are both limits and consequences for using his special ability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. He's Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this was my first real foray into writing fic (a few very short ficlets aside), and while I don't think there's anything wrong with it per se, I've discovered in the intervening time that it just really isn't heading in the direction that I like for my writing to go. There really isn't any way that I'm going to finish it at this point. So I'm officially marking it as abandoned. There aren't that many of you following it, so I assume no one is going to be too terribly disappointed. I'm also orphaning it because, like I said, it just doesn't really fit with my brand at this point. 
> 
> Consider this a fond farwell. 
> 
> Go, little unfinished fic. Be free.

“Sherlock, he’s dead.”

“No, Mycroft. Don’t say that. He’s going to be okay.” Defiant as ever, Sherlock turns his flushed, tear-streaked face toward his older brother and glares at him, daring him to deny it, but whatever trace of emotion he sees in Mycroft’s not-quite-blank face—something that looks an awful lot like pity—gives him pause. “Isn’t he?”

Mycroft frowns for the span of a heartbeat before schooling his face back into its usual impassive veneer. He observes his younger brother in stony silence for what is in reality only a few seconds, but to Sherlock it feels like a lifetime before Mycroft sighs heavily. “I’ll leave you alone to say goodbye.” With that, he abruptly turns on his heel and strides from the room before Sherlock’s tears have a chance to form again.

For a long while after, Sherlock’s anguished sobs fill the sitting room, his heartbreak pushing into every dusty corner of the room. However, as much as he doesn’t want to believe it, Sherlock knows that Mycroft is never wrong. He is the smartest person Sherlock knows, so if Mycroft says it’s time to say goodbye, then that must be true.

He slowly works to compose himself, pulling back from forceful sobs to steady tears and finally to soft sniffles. He presses the heels of his hands hard against his reddened eyes, and the cool pressure helps to soothe their irritation. He brushes his fingers through the tear tracks on his cheeks and wipes his hands on his thighs. After another minute to ensure that his breathing is even, he is calm again, so he finally crosses the room and kneels next to the sofa. _He doesn’t look dead_ , Sherlock thinks. _He just looks like he’s sleeping_ , though no matter how much he wishes that were true, Sherlock knows that Mycroft wouldn’t lie to him. _Don’t take my word for it. Observe for yourself_ , Mycroft’s voice says to him. _Observe_. _Yes, observe. I can do this_. Sherlock looks at the small body—really looks—and he can see that there’s no telltale rise and fall of breath entering and leaving the lungs. He really is dead. It really is time to say goodbye.

_Goodbye. How do I say goodbye? How do I begin to express how much love I had for you, and how lost I feel now, how alone, how broken?_ Maybe words exist somewhere that can adequately describe this heartbreak, but Sherlock doesn’t know them, so he simply says, “Goodbye, Redbeard. You were a good dog.”

He reaches over to pet his beloved Border Collie’s head one last time, when something extraordinary happens. Sherlock feels a jolt run through his fingertips—similar to the jolt he feels when he shuffles his feet across his bedroom rug in the morning and then touches the knob of the bathroom door—and Redbeard lifts his head and whimpers. Sherlock pulls his hand away as if he’s been burned. He stares unseeing at his dog, his thoughts silenced by overwhelming white noise.

It takes exactly 17 seconds for his brain to start working again. “Mycroft! He’s not dead! He’s not!” Overcome with joy, Sherlock throws his arms around Redbeard and pulls him into a hug, just as his brother rushes back into the room. Sherlock jumps to his feet and, in his elation, hugs Mycroft, too. The tiniest trace of pink warms the cool mask Mycroft wears, and he clears his throat softly, obviously uncomfortable with this unexpected, blatant display of emotion. Sherlock releases him from the embrace but grabs his hand and pulls him toward the sofa. “Look, Mycroft. He’s alive. See for yourse…”

Mycroft fixes his steady gaze on his brother’s treasured pet and sees exactly what he had before he left the room the first time. Redbeard isn’t moving. He isn’t breathing. He’s dead. Mycroft turns cautiously back toward his younger brother who is gaping at the dog, mouth moving soundlessly with unspoken cries of shock. Mycroft’s eyes flick briefly back to Redbeard—still dead—before coming back to Sherlock. “Oh, Sherlock,” he breathes.

_He doesn’t understand. He thinks I made it up. He doesn’t understand. He has to understand. _Sherlock steps over to the sofa and tries to recreate his actions from a few minutes ago. He kneels next to Redbeard and hesitantly reaches out a hand toward the dog’s head. His hand stops inches from Redbeard’s fur, and Sherlock forces himself to take a deep, steadying breath before he closes the remaining distance and pets his dog again.

Nothing happens. Sherlock tries again. Still nothing. _Maybe I’m not doing it right. Was I kneeling farther to the left? Did I pet him closer to his ears?_ Sherlock shifts around, tries a few different positions, a few different places on Redbeard’s head. When it’s clear that nothing is going to happen, renewed tears begin to roll silently down Sherlock’s porcelain cheeks. Nearly a minute passes before he finds his voice again and tries to explain between broken sobs. “I don’t know… what happened… You said he was… dead… and he was… wasn’t breathing… but I… I touched him… and… and he… he lifted his head… He was alive… I saw it… He was alive… I don’t… understand… why… but… he was dead and then… he wasn’t anymore.” Mycroft’s eyebrows raise so high they threaten to escape into his hairline. Sherlock doesn’t like that look of disbelief. “I’m telling… the truth…”

“I believe you, Sherlock.” Sherlock looks up at his brother in surprise. Mycroft continues not unkindly, “I believe that you truly think that’s what happened, but we both know that’s not possible.” Sherlock’s face falls. “You’re letting sentiment get the better of you.”

“I’m not.” Sherlock takes a hasty step away, recoiling as if he’s been slapped. “I know what happened. I’m not lying, and I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Mycroft replies gently.  “But look at it logically, Sherlock. You observed Redbeard. You saw that he wasn’t breathing—you said so yourself. He’s dead, and nothing can bring him back from that. Caring about him won’t save him.”

“I know that, Mycroft. Don’t treat me like some stupid child.”

“You are a child, Sherlock. You’re seven years old.”

“I know what I saw! He was alive! He was…”

“Sherlock! You’re…”

“No, Mycroft! Stop it! Just stop it!” Sherlock yells, surging forward until he’s nearly toe-to-toe with his infuriating older brother.

“What’s going on in here?” Mummy interrupts, nearly shouting to be heard over the brothers’ arguing. She looks back and forth between the two boys, eyebrows raised, expecting an explanation. Mycroft’s eyes flicker briefly toward the sofa. Mummy’s eyes follow his, and her face falls. “Oh, Sherlock. Is he…”

“Don’t,” her youngest son pleads, his anger at Mycroft draining at the look of pity on his mother’s face. Her gaze rakes over him appraisingly, and he wants to say something else. He opens his mouth to try to explain what happened, but Mycroft gives a tiny cough and shakes his head a fraction of an inch to each side in silent warning. _Stupid Mycroft. Don’t tell me what to do. Mummy will listen to me. She’ll understand._ Sherlock tries again, but it takes so long to make his mouth cooperate with his brain that Mummy’s expectant look begins to turn wary, her brows furrowing in suspicion. _I didn’t do anything wrong! Why is she looking at me like that? I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t. Did I? I don’t even really know what I did. I just touched him. That’s all. I touched him, and he came back to life. That’s not wrong. He came back to life. That’s good. But he’s dead now. So… What does that mean? I know he came back. He did. I know he did. But he’s gone again now, and she’s not going to believe me. Just like Mycroft. They didn’t see it with their own eyes, so they’re not ever going to believe me._

Sherlock can feel his eyes beginning to fill with tears again, but this time he’s not sad for Redbeard; he’s sad for himself. He’s sad because he lost his best friend and then somehow found him and lost him again in the span of a few heartbeats. He’s sad because he managed to bring Redbeard back to life somehow, but he doesn’t know how and can’t seem to do it again. He’s sad because he knows that in some way he’s responsible for Redbeard dying again. He’s sad because if he tries to explain, Mummy and Mycroft will just think he’s a freak like all those kids at school do. He’s sad because he’s alone now. He’s sad because no one understands, and no one ever will.

Sherlock forces himself to look at Redbeard once more and struggles to hold in the sobs threatening to break free from his throat. _Goodbye, Redbeard. I love you_. He pushes past Mycroft and flees the room before anyone can see the new round of tears begin to fall.


	2. 57 Seconds

“Sherlock! I’m so happy to… I mean… Why… What are you doing here?” Molly stammers, as she absently smoothes her ponytail and tucks a fallen lock of dark brown hair behind her ear. 

“Lestrade asked me to take a look at a body.” Sherlock ignores the hopeful smile Molly gives him and pushes past her into the morgue, letting the door swing closed behind him.

Molly’s grin fades and her shoulders drop. “Oh.” She looks toward the door through which Sherlock has just disappeared, her lips pressed into a thin line, and takes a moment to push away the disappointment evident on her face. Once she can put what would reasonably pass as a happy smile back on her face, she follows Sherlock into the morgue.

“Which body is it?”

“Colin King. He was brought in this morning.”

“Oh, yes, he’s over here.” Molly indicates the table on the far side of the room where a body is clearly visible under a thin white sheet. “I was just about to start on him.”

Sherlock crosses to the table and peels back the sheet, not even removing his leather gloves before beginning to examine the corpse. His eyes rake up and down the body, taking in details that others would likely miss or dismiss as insignificant, but Sherlock knows better. Every detail, from the state of someone’s wedding ring to the number of cat hairs on their trouser legs, provides a piece of the puzzle, and that’s what Sherlock does—he solves puzzles.

His current puzzle is Colin King, whose body was found in a field behind a row of mostly-abandoned flats. What had happened was clear, even to the detectives at Scotland Yard. _Imbeciles that they are_. The victim’s kidneys, liver, and heart had been removed before his body was disposed of in the field. How he had died is, therefore, quite obvious, and even the why is a near certainty—someone is harvesting organs, most likely to be sold to the right buyer for the right price. The remaining question is _who?_ Organ harvesting tends to be a serial crime, so Sherlock needs to determine who did this and quickly so that no one else becomes a victim.

_The cuts to the body are made with precision, so we’re looking for someone with significant surgical experience. Logical. Someone with that kind of medical background would also be needed in order to protect the integrity of the organs before and during transport. Puncture wounds inside the elbow indicate he was attached to an IV to keep him sedated during the surgery—in order to keep the organs as fresh as possible, they didn’t kill him before cutting him open. There’s also a puncture wound on his neck, so he was drugged, obviously prior to the surgery, so…_

Sherlock suddenly becomes aware of a warm presence at his side. He turns his head to see Molly standing next to him, a bit too close for comfort. Well, it would be a bit too close for comfort for someone normal. For Sherlock, it feels almost as if she’s trying to crawl inside him, and he suppresses a shudder and takes a small step away from her to give himself some breathing room.

“Do you want me to start on him?” Molly looks up at him expectantly. “I’ll let you watch,” she says with a hopeful raise of her eyebrows and a small, flirty giggle.

“No,” Sherlock says, his protest coming out more forceful than necessary. Molly recoils slightly. He tries again, forcing his voice back to its typical volume and even, almost-bored tone, “No, that won’t be necessary.” She looks disappointed but not as offended as she had a moment ago. He doesn’t want to offend Molly. She’s good at what she does, which Sherlock respects, and he needs her so that he can have easy access to the morgue. However, her obvious attraction to him and her insistence on pursuing that attraction make him uncomfortable. He needs space. He turns and walks around the other side of the table, putting the body between them and breathing a little easier for it. It’s a start, but what he really needs is for her to leave so that he can do what he really came here to do. _But how? This is why it’s better when Lestrade is here. He can send her back to her office in search of files related to a case, or lead her off to discuss autopsy results. How do I get her to leave? How?_

“Molly,” he begins, not quite sure what he’s going to say next. She looks up at him expectantly. “I…” _Think._ His stomach growls quietly. _Oh._ “I could really go for a coffee.”

Her eyes widen, and her lips curl into a slight, shy smile. “Coffee? You want to have coffee with me?”

“Yes. That’s what I just said. You know I don’t like to repeat myself.” He sighs in exasperation, and Molly nervously chews on her bottom lip.

“Oh, sorry… Yes… Um… So… When do you, you know, want to get coffee?”

“Now would be great.”

“Now?” Molly’s voice rises closer to a squeak. “You want to get coffee _now_?”

“Molly,” Sherlock warns, growing impatient at having to repeat himself again. “Yes, now.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“Black, two sugars,” he says and bends down over the table to begin examining the body again. Molly seems to realize then that she and Sherlock are talking about two different concepts of “getting coffee.” Her hopes dashed yet again, her happy façade crumbles. She turns away to hide the hint of pain that darkens her face. After a few calming breaths, she strides purposefully from the room.

Sherlock looks up when he hears the door snap shut and finds himself blissfully alone in the morgue. _Time to get to work._ He pulls off his gloves and sets the timer on his phone for 57 seconds, giving himself 3 seconds of wiggle room. After a quick glance to make sure he’s still alone, he presses start on the timer and taps the victim on the forehead with one finger.

Colin King bolts upright on the table, throwing apprehensive glances around the room, his head turning side to side as he takes in his surroundings. His eyes finally land on Sherlock standing next to him. “Where in bloody hell am I?”

“You’re in the morgue, Mr. King, but there’s no time to…”

“The _morgue_? Why am I in the morgue?”

This is the part Sherlock hates most because it’s difficult to tell how people will react. Some people just accept it. It’s always a pleasant surprise when that happens. Some people deny it, unable to believe the obvious truth. Some scream in terror. Some get angry. Some try to run. Worst of all, some cry. When that happens, it’s never just a few tears; it’s wracking, uncontrollable sobs that make the victims nearly impossible to question. Colin King doesn’t look like a crier, but one never knows.

“You’re dead.”

“Dead? I can’t be dead. I’m talking to you, ain’t I?”

“Trust me. You can, and you are.” When the victim opens his mouth to protest again, Sherlock hurries to cut him off. “There isn’t time for this, Mr. King. What can you tell me about who killed you?”

“Nothing ‘cause I ain’t dead. I’m talking to you, and everybody knows dead people don’t talk.”

 _Denial it is then._ _Tedious_. Sherlock runs his fingers through his curls in frustration. Throwing a glance at his phone timer, he tries a different tactic. “Fine, Mr. King. You’re not dead. You’re just in the morgue by mistake. Now quickly, what is the last thing you remember?”

The change in tactic works somehow. He squints, as if that will help him better remember what happened and offers, “Um, I went to meet a bloke about a flat. Saw an ad on Craigslist. He was looking for a flatmate.”

“Where was the flat?”

“Out in Kensington. On Castletown Road.”

“What do you remember about your potential flatmate? Did he give you his name?”

“He said his name was David. He was… nice, I guess. Friendly. We only chatted for a few minutes.” Sherlock rolls his eyes and tsks impatiently. The victim pauses for a second, trying to recall more details. “He seemed really interested in my health. He asked me questions about how much I exercise and about my diet. I think the ad maybe said something about that, too.”

 _Now we’re getting somewhere_. “What exactly did the ad say?”

“Um, let’s see…”

Sherlock peeks at his phone. Time is running out. “THINK! Quickly!”

“He was looking for someone who doesn’t smoke. Someone in their 30s or maybe 40s…” His face screws up in concentration. He opens his mouth to speak again. “He...” Sherlock’s phone beeps, and both men look down at it. Sherlock huffs in irritation. He reaches forward and touches the victim on the forehead. He immediately stills and falls back on the table, dead once more.

Sherlock quickly but carefully arranges the body into the same position it was before. Then as he finishes examining any details that might give him additional clues as to the killer’s identity, Molly returns with a coffee in each hand. Sherlock takes his cup from her and immediately heads for the exit. “Gotta dash.”

“Oh, already? Um… Okay… I… Okay.” Something in Molly’s voice makes Sherlock pause as he reaches the door. He turns back. She looks crestfallen and close to actual tears. Even though he doesn’t feel about her (or about anyone for that matter) the way that she does about him, he doesn’t want to cause her pain. She’s one of the few people in his life who he would consider to be anything even close to being a friend. It wouldn’t do to make her feel so badly, especially if he wants to keep having access to the morgue. _Fix this. Say something to fix it._

“Molly…” He struggles to find what words should follow that. He runs through potential line after potential line in his mind, but they all seem wrong. _I’m rubbish at sentiment. No matter what I say, I’m going to make it worse_. Eventually he settles on, “Thank you for the coffee.” Her small smile and nod tell him that he managed to say something right after all.


	3. Only Death Can Pay For Life

Three days later, Sherlock is on his way to try to prevent another innocent man from having his organs removed and his body unceremoniously abandoned. Sherlock’s research had not turned up the original Craigslist ad to which Colin King had responded, but this morning, a new ad had popped up that made Sherlock suspicious. It wasn’t for the flat on Castletown Road, but it was still in Kensington and specifically mentioned that the poster was looking for a male flatmate, non-smoker, between 30 and 45 years old, and in good physical health. Sherlock had called the listed phone number pretending to be interested in the flat and asking if he could pop round today to take a look. The poster had mentioned that he would be meeting another interested party at noon and then heading to work, but Sherlock would be welcome to come round the next morning instead. _Idiot._ Sherlock had dashed right down the stairs, out the door, and into a cab, texting Lestrade as soon as the taxi lurched forward.

Traffic is particularly heavy on this wet and dreary day, and the impatient drumming of Sherlock’s leather-gloved fingers against the door echoes the soft beat of steady rain on the window as the cab crawls through drab London streets. As it always does when Sherlock is gripped by the frenetic energy that comes with a break in a case, the minutes seem to creep by rather than passing along at their usual pace, an effect compounded by the sluggish movement of the taxi toward its destination. By the time Sherlock jumps out and throws cash at the driver a block away from the flat in question, the rain has faded to a drizzle and Lestrade and Donovan are already waiting for him.

Donovan catches sight of Sherlock approaching their car. “Heads up, boss. Freak incoming.”

Lestrade frowns at her in mild warning. He climbs out of the car, Donovan following close behind, and makes for the man in the Belstaff. “Sherlock,” he says by way of greeting.

“Lestrade.” Sherlock nods ever so slightly at the Detective Inspector and patently ignores Donovan, who is trying her best to do the same to him. He glances at the time on his phone. “We need to go. His next victim could already be in trouble.”

Lestrade runs his fingers through his short, pewter hair. “We don’t even know if this is really our suspect.”

“Of course it is. There isn’t time for this.” Sherlock turns and starts toward the flat.

“Sherlock, stop.” Lestrade strides after him, grabbing the arm of Sherlock’s coat and swinging the taller man back around to face him. “There are procedures that have to be followed. We’re not going to just burst in there.”

“Fine. _We_ aren’t. But _I_ am.” He pulls his arm out of Lestrade’s grasp and turns back toward the flat, but Donovan steps into his path, blocking the way forward.

“Listen, freak. Why don’t you stay back and let the real detectives work?”

“If you see a real detective, Sally, please do let me know.”

“Enough, you two.” Lestrade attempts to rub some of the tension out of his forehead. “Look, Sherlock, we need to know if this is our guy before we do anything… reckless. I’ll go up there and pretend I want a look at the flat, and I can see if anything unusual is going on.”

“I already spoke to him on the phone earlier. It would make more sense if I went.” Sherlock sidesteps Donovan and purposefully strides up the walk toward the flat before either of them can stop him. Greg groans in frustration and motions Sally to step behind a car parked on the street so that they are mostly hidden from the view out the front door.

Sherlock crosses the remaining steps to the front door of the flat. The paint on the door is faded and peeling away in large chips, and the front windows are heavily fogged with layers of grime. The small lawn is badly overgrown and littered with rubbish. The flats on either side of this one are clearly unoccupied and have been for some time. Sherlock would think this one is vacant as well if it weren’t for the two muffled voices he can hear echoing softly inside. He presses closer to the door in an attempt to better make out what’s being said. _Useless. Too far away._

Returning to his plan, Sherlock raises a fist to knock on the door, when there is a sharp yelp from somewhere inside the flat, followed in quick succession by a thump, an angry grunt from one of the voices, a small cry of pain from the other, and a loud thud. Sherlock throws his shoulder against the door and it bursts inward. Somewhere behind him, Lestrade swears and runs toward the flat with Donovan at his heels. Sherlock doesn’t wait for them to catch up before he surges into the flat. He rushes through the entryway, past the kitchen, and into the sitting room. The room is empty aside from a large, shabby cabinet in the corner obviously left behind by previous tenants because it was too heavy or cumbersome to move, a sandy-haired man lying unmoving on his back on the floor, and another man in the process of crashing through the back door and out into the garden beyond. In the second that it takes for Sherlock to take in this scene and launch himself after the suspect, Lestrade and Donovan catch up. Understanding washes over Lestrade, and he rushes out the back door behind Sherlock, yelling back over his shoulder, “Sally, stay here and call it in.”

Sherlock and Lestrade vault over low garden walls, chasing the suspect through the neighboring gardens and clambering over a taller fence at the end of the block of flats. The suspect sprints east along a side street and turns into an alleyway. Lestrade stumbles into the alley after him, but Sherlock continues along the side street, having calculated the route the man is most likely to take and determined to cut him off further ahead. He rounds the next corner, cuts through a short alley, turns again, takes a right at the end of the block, angles through a car park, and continues down the street for half a block, toward the exit of yet another alley on the far side of the road. He flings himself into the alleyway and crashes hard into a solid body, landing in a heavy heap on the ground with the man sprawled awkwardly beneath him.

Lestrade pounds through the far entrance of the alley as Sherlock shifts up and rolls the suspect onto his stomach. He presses his weight back down onto the man to keep him in place while Lestrade cuffs his hands behind his back. Together, they pull the suspect to his feet and walk him back the way Lestrade had come. Sherlock marches purposefully onward, paying little mind to Lestrade and his prisoner trailing behind him. The roundabout path the man had taken had lead them away from the flat and then curled back toward it, so it’s only a two block walk back to the crime scene. Sally is on the phone near Lestrade’s car, and Sherlock slips past her unnoticed and back into the flat to take a look around before it turns into a circus of imbeciles.

He hadn’t given the victim more than a cursory glance before rushing off after the suspect, but back in the sitting room he can tell the body hasn’t moved since they passed through the room the first time around. Donovan would have checked the victim for a pulse when she stayed behind on Lestrade’s orders, but just in case—because Sherlock knows that the Met is full of the kind of idiots who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between dead bodies and live ones—he bends down and reaches out two long, gloved fingers. He really looks at the victim for the first time and pauses, strangely engrossed, before his fingers reach their mark. His own pulse beats a little faster as he stares at the man’s face. _A bit of a weathered face—a man who has seen more than his fair share of the world—but there’s something oddly arresting about it, even in death. Attractive, though not necessarily traditionally beautiful. A face that would be just as at home scowling as it would be laughing and hard to resist when wearing either expression._ Sherlock realizes that his fingers have moved seemingly of their own accord toward the man’s cheek, reaching as if to cup his face, and he jerks his hand back in alarm. It’s unlike him to not be in total control of his physical expressions, particularly at a crime scene, where he’s usually his most composed. He glances toward the entryway in alarm, but he’s still alone in the room. Returning his eyes to the victim, Sherlock succeeds in pressing his fingers to the man’s neck this time.   _Definitely dead._ He sighs heavily, disappointed that he hadn’t managed to prevent this death after all. _But why? They didn’t kill the other victim before they started removing his organs. This man should be alive. Sedated perhaps, but alive. What’s different this time?_

“ _You._ What are _you_ doing here?” a bearded man asks testily as he enters the sitting room with two other police officers Sherlock only knows by sight.

“I should ask you the same, Anderson.” Sherlock pushes smoothly to his feet and glares at the three of them.

“Me? I actually work for the Met, unlike you, unless you’ve forgotten.”

“The Met employs any number of idiots, all of them less thickheaded than you. They could have called in anyone else today and found themselves better served than they are by your presence here.”

“Insult me all you want, Sherlock. This is an active crime scene, and you shouldn’t be here. I don’t need you running around contaminating everything before I’ve even started to process the scene.”

Sherlock opens his mouth for another scathing attack on Anderson’s negligible intellect, when Lestrade enters the room, having deposited the suspect with another officer. “Let him be, Anderson.”

Sherlock smirks at Anderson’s huff of irritation and bends back down near the body. Anderson can’t seem to let it go though. “I don’t know why you put up with him, but you and I both know he shouldn’t be here, Greg.”

Lestrade heads off his subordinate before the man can further question his decisions. “He’s here because he’s the one who worked out this was going to happen before it did. He’s here because without him, rash as he is, we wouldn’t have caught the bastard who did this. He’s here because I allow him to be.” One of the unnamed officers tries to protest further, and Lestrade orders in a tone that brooks no argument, “Out. Everybody out. Just give him five minutes.” He pushes everyone toward and then out the front door and snaps it closed behind him.

Sherlock refocuses on the scene in front of him. He’s careful not to touch anything because the scene has not been processed yet. _Though Anderson will certainly miss half the relevant data anyway_. He sweeps the scene with only his eyes, scrutinizing every detail he can find. _There’s a puncture wound on_ _his neck, where he was obviously drugged with a sedative, just as the first victim was. Angle of the body suggests he crumpled backward from a standing position. He didn’t move after he fell. A fast-acting sedative then. Cane in his right hand; obviously he has a limp. Shallow dent on the lower half of the cane, about as wide as a man’s head, and a short, black hair stuck around one of the screws, a likely match for the man we chased down. The victim hit the suspect with his cane before he fell. So… A fast-acting sedative, but he had enough time to take one swing before he went down. To leave a dent in the cane, it would have been a hard swing—he’s strong then--and a hit like that would have definitely caused his attacker to waver._ Inexplicably, Sherlock feels a twinge of pride for the man lying dead on the floor.

He presses on, eyes seeking out the place where the victim’s head impacted the floor. _No obvious signs of head trauma from the fall. It may have been enough for a concussion, had he lived, but it isn’t enough to be his cause of death. His hair has been cut recently. It’s the color of early-morning sunlight filtered through London fog. I wonder what it would feel like between my fingers._

_Wait. Where did that thought come from?_

Sherlock gives himself a mental shake and concentrates again on the task at hand. He prowls to the other side of the body where he examines a mobile phone that has fallen from the victim’s pocket, landing face-down on the floor. _Too new and expensive a model for someone willing to meet up about a potential flatshare in this kind of place, so it must have been a gift. The back is heavily scratched; it’s been kept in a pocket with someone’s keys. There’s an engraving on the back as well—Harry Watson from Clara xxx. This man wouldn’t have treated his one luxury item, a gift clearly from a girlfriend, so poorly. Harry Watson is the phone’s previous owner then, who gifted it to this man, obviously after the relationship with Clara came to an end. People don’t typically give friends such expensive gifts, even if they are used, so Harry is a relative of the victim, most likely a brother, but not a brother to whom he’s close enough to turn for help, or he wouldn’t be looking to live here._

Sherlock knows that many of these deductions have little to nothing to do with what happened here, but he can’t just turn them off. He looks at something, and his brain crackles with information, taking in all the details and making connections at the speed of light. Even if many of his deductions may be unrelated to the case at hand, anything can turn out to be a clue, and even the details unrelated to the case help to give a fuller picture of the lives of those involved, which can be extremely useful. It’s why Lestrade needs his help with cases so often. Sherlock can see the things others miss and fit them into meaningful patterns, though it doesn’t hurt that he can also talk to the dead and ask them what happened.

 

\--------------------

 

Lestrade wasn’t ever meant to know that Sherlock could awaken the dead. No one was. After the way Mycroft had treated him when Redbeard died the second time, Sherlock had vowed that he would never tell another soul what he could do. Enough people already thought he was a freak because of his unique genius without him telling them about his other special gift, but, as is so often the case with things people want to keep secret, Lestrade had discovered Sherlock’s by accident.

Five years before, Sherlock had been walking through an alleyway, completely oblivious to the police chase occurring overhead. Lestrade was chasing a suspect across the rooftops of a block of flats in central London, when the suspect leapt across the alleyway, or rather attempted to. He badly misjudged the distance and fell between the buildings as Lestrade skidded to a stop at the edge of the roof above. The suspect fell onto a closed dumpster and died on impact. Before Sherlock could even register the sound of the man hitting the nearby lid, the body bounced off it and nearly landed on him. One of the suspect’s arms, flung wildly by the impact, brushed Sherlock’s hand on the way to the ground. Despite having been dead just seconds before, the man popped up and continued to flee. After a few seconds of pure shock, Sherlock realized what had happened and tore off after the suspect. He couldn’t have just let the man go because if Sherlock had let him live for a full minute, someone or something else nearby would have died to take the man’s place. Only death can pay for life it seems—a lesson that it had cost Sherlock dearly to learn—and he had long ago decided it wasn’t his place to decide anyone’s fate. The dead had to stay dead so that the living could stay living. And so he ran after the man, catching up to him and tapping him on the back of the neck, returning him to his rightful place amongst the dead.

Soon thereafter, Sherlock found himself pulled into yet another alleyway; Lestrade had witnessed the entirety of the strange scene and followed him, cornering him when he finally caught up. Surprisingly to Sherlock, Lestrade had seemed to readily accept what he had seen happen—that a man had died and then come back to life and then died again all because Sherlock had touched him. Even more surprisingly, when Sherlock deduced that Lestrade was a Sergeant with the Met, that he was on the verge of being promoted to Inspector, that his wife had recently begun sleeping with their next door neighbor, and that on that very morning he had had a cigarette for the first time in two months, instead of calling Sherlock a freak or something worse as usually happened, Lestrade had laughed heartily and said, “Hell, you might be a better detective than I am.” After that, he had started sending Sherlock cold case files, asking him to take a look for any clues the officers at the Met might have missed. Soon Lestrade even started bringing him in as a consultant on active investigations. Through a combination of deductions at crime scenes and trips to the morgue to talk to the victims—and occasionally the suspects—Sherlock and Lestrade solved more homicides than most of the other officers at the Met combined. Eventually, Sherlock had made Consulting Detective his official title and his full-time job, helping Lestrade with cases when he needed it and taking private cases in the interim.

 

\--------------------

_He’s small—short and trim—but he’s compactly muscled, making him sturdier than he looks, so he wouldn’t have been easy for the suspect to overpower, doubly true because he’s clearly also recently returned from military service. Which explains the strength of his swing. An army man. Interesting. That’s… strangely appealing. Even in that frankly appalling shirt. He’d look better without it._

Sherlock realizes where his train of thought has led again and grinds his teeth in frustration. It’s not the first time that he’s noticed that a corpse was attractive, but it’s certainly the first time he’s let it distract him so thoroughly from his deductive process. _What is it about this particular man that’s so captivating?_ Sherlock doesn’t know. He doesn’t like not knowing.

 _He’s dead. It doesn’t matter._ His five minutes with the scene are almost up and Lestrade is going to be back and want to know what he’s got. The truth is, Sherlock doesn’t have much. They both already know who the killer is, as he’s already in the back of a police car. They already know the motive. They already know that the victim was sedated. The only question is why this victim died at this point in the process, when the first died after the organ removal process had begun. _The victim was standing when the sedative was administered. He managed one hard swing of his cane, hitting his attacker, before he fell backward and died. There are no indications that his death was caused by physical trauma, so contamination of the sedative is the most likely cause._ That’s it. A most likely cause. That’s all Sherlock has, and there’s no way to confirm it before the toxicology report comes back.

Well, unless you count his ability to just ask the victim. As much as he’s loathe to admit it, Sherlock may have missed a detail or two at this scene, distracted as he’s been, and asking the victim what happened could certainly make things easier. _He wouldn’t know if the sedative had been contaminated, but if that isn’t the cause of death, he might know other details that would help. It would certainly be helpful to know of any other evidence to consider before Anderson comes back in here and makes a mess of things._

But Sherlock never wakes anyone at a crime scene. It wouldn’t do for someone to come in and find that a body has moved half way across the room from where the victim died. And even if Sherlock could somehow prevent the victims from moving, there are too many opportunities for someone to overhear or even see what Sherlock can do. No, he and Lestrade long ago agreed that it was best for everyone involved if he only woke victims at the morgue, where Lestrade can distract Molly and keep the potential for witnesses to a bare minimum. It’s a rule he’s always been more than willing to follow; there’s no need to give people any more reason to call him a freak than they already do. _Not that I care what people think._

And yet, Sherlock finds himself contemplating breaking this rule for the first time ever. He knows it’s a terrible idea. It’s risky. It’s rash. It’s illogical. And yet… There’s something he can’t seem to resist about this man. _I want to know the pitch of his voice. The way he sounds when he laughs. The color of his eyes. The way the color does or doesn’t change when he’s angry. Sad. Happy. Why he chose that awful shirt. Why he doesn’t get along with his brother. Where his limp came from. What he did in the army._

Before he can turn his thoughts back to why this is a bad idea, Sherlock pulls off his right glove, sets the timer on his phone for 57 seconds, and gently brushes one finger against the man’s cheek, feeling the familiar spark as life returns to cold flesh.

The man’s eyes pop open, instantly alert. _Blue, like a rolling ocean_ , Sherlock barely has time to think before sharp pain blocks any further thoughts. He grabs his left shoulder and staggers away from the victim, as the man pushes back and climbs to his feet. He backs up until he’s nearly touching the wall, and his eyes dart wildly about the room. He’s practically vibrating with anxiety, and he holds his cane in front of him like a sword, ready to strike Sherlock again.

Sherlock manages to push through the pain and observe this unexpected reaction. _Struck immediately. Looking for his attacker. Doesn’t recognize me but assumes I must have been part of the attack. Say something to reassure him._ Sherlock continues to stare at the man, no calming words coming to mind. _Say something. Anything._ He opens his mouth and closes it again. _Ok, forget comforting. Time is running out. Just say something that will catch his attention. Anything to get him to talk._ Sherlock casts around his brain for a topic that might work. _Army. He was in the military. Say something about that._

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The man’s eyes snap back to Sherlock’s face and his whole body stills. After a beat, he answers warily. “Afghanistan.” His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and Sherlock’s breath hitches slightly. “Sorry. How did you know that?”

Sherlock smirks, and the man’s cane slowly drops a few inches toward the floor as they stare at each other. The silence stretches on, filled with each man’s quiet curiosity about the other, until the victim suddenly remembers that he was in the middle of panicking. He raises the cane back to its previous height. “What the hell is going on?”

“You were….” _Dead. You were dead. Just say it. You were dead._ Sherlock can’t recall a previous instance where he’s told a victim anything different. It’s easiest to tell them the truth, especially when he needs details on how they died. But once again, there’s something different about this man, and Sherlock can’t seem to make his mouth form the word. “Drugged.” Then he is surprised to find himself adding, “You’re okay now. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not! It’s not okay!” The man surges forward, pushing the cane toward Sherlock to emphasize the strength of his words. “You drugged me!”

“No.”

“No? NO??? I was talking to your…  _friend_ …” He spits out the word as if he doesn’t like the taste of it in his mouth. “Your accomplice, when you snuck up behind me and stabbed me in the neck with a bloody needle.” He glares at Sherlock for a moment and adds, “At least I got in one good hit on him before I went down.”

Sherlock’s brain lurches forward into full-on consulting detective mode once more. _TWO suspects. One distracted him while the other approached from behind and drugged him._ He turns abruptly away from the victim, his coat whirling around him, and crouches to the floor to examine the places where the layers of dust have been disturbed. _Three sets of footprints. Three. How could I have missed that?_ _This set clearly belongs to the victim. This set leads toward the rear door—the suspect we chased. And this set…_

Sherlock stands and follows the faint footprints toward the cabinet in the corner. He glances back and is surprised to discover that the victim has followed him, wide-eyed but slowly inching closer to Sherlock and the cabinet. When he stills and listens, Sherlock can just barely hear rasps of breath coming from inside the cabinet. Pulling his glove back on so that he doesn’t leave any fingerprints, he reaches his hands toward the doors. The victim stops beside him, cane raised and aimed toward the cabinet, and when Sherlock looks his way again, the man gives him a small, sharp nod. Sherlock’s fingers brush against the handles of the double cabinet doors.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Time is up. Sherlock pulls his hands back. He has just three seconds to pull off his glove and touch the man once more. Three seconds until he’s dead again. Three seconds until his blue eyes close and his handsome face goes slack and his compactly powerful body crumples to the floor in a heap.  Three seconds until it’s all over, and Sherlock didn’t even get to ask him his name. Three seconds until…

There is a loud thump against the cabinet doors. Sherlock and the victim just manage to jump out of the way as the doors fall open and a body crashes to the floor.


	4. An Army Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of this chapter, I now have a beta. Yay! Thanks to the wonderful [cakepopsforeveryone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cakepopsforeveryone/pseuds/cakepopsforeveryone) for being my writing guinea pig. :)

“Alright. Your five minutes are up. I need all you’ve…” A man with pewter hair and tired eyes trails off into shocked silence as he walks into the sitting room, a man and a woman following on his heels. Three heads turn in unison from the tall man in the ridiculous coat, to the body that has just fallen out of the cabinet, to John, to the place on the floor where John had woken up, and back to the tall man.

 “You were…” the woman begins, raising a finger to point at John. _I was what?_

The man with the unruly mop of dark curls talks over her. “I always knew you were an appalling detective, Donovan, but even I didn’t realize you would have that much trouble telling the difference between a live body and a dead one.” _Detective. Ok, so these three must be with the police, but then who is this man with the absurd cheekbones? Wait a minute. Dead? Did he just say dead?_

“What?” she asks sharply.

“I would have thought that even you must know how to find a pulse—certainly that must be something they teach you at some point. But I can admit when I’m wrong.”

“Wrong?” she spits back, seemingly confused.

“Yes. Obviously you don’t know how to find a pulse after all, so I was wrong for thinking you could. Forgive me for overestimating your abilities. Won’t happen again.” John almost laughs at that. This man is incredibly full of himself, but there’s something about that haughtiness that John finds appealing.

“Listen, freak. I know bloody well how to check for a pulse. He didn’t have one. He was dead.” John lowers his gaze to the floor, staring at nothing, as he contemplates the conversation going on around him, his brows furrowed and his lips pursed.

“Heavily sedated,” the man who isn’t a police officer corrects. John can feel the man’s intense gaze flicker toward him briefly—those dazzling, _green? silver? blue?_ eyes—but by the time he looks up, the man’s looking at the trio again. John tries to piece together the story as the man continues. “He came round. Mentioned that he’d been attacked by two individuals, not one. And I observed that the second suspect had hidden in this cabinet.” _They found me on the floor and thought I was dead. Unconscious, pulse severely slowed by whatever I was drugged with._ He glances at his watch. _I couldn’t have been out for more than an hour at most. I must have been very heavily sedated to appear to not have a pulse at all. That kind of sedation wouldn’t wear off so completely this quickly, but I feel fine. Maybe the adrenaline rush when I first woke up would have counteracted the drug a bit, but…_

“So you _killed_ him?” the bearded man queries.

“Obviously not.”

 “Oh, sure, we’ll just believe the psychopath when he says he didn’t kill the man dead at his feet.”

Something about the way the bearded man said _psychopath_ raises John’s hackles, drawing him out of his thoughts. He’s offended on behalf of the gorgeous man in the coat. “He didn’t,” he interjects perhaps a bit too forcefully, judging by the way four heads snap toward him. He risks a quick glance at the man with the most brilliant eyes John has ever seen and finds that he looks surprised but also the tiniest bit pleased. A small flash of warmth sparks in John’s chest.

“How would you know?” the bearded man asks, one doubtful eyebrow raised toward his hairline.

“Well, uh…” John licks his lips, nervous with so many scrutinizing pairs of eyes turned his way. “We could hear this, um, person,” he gestures toward the body on the floor, “breathing in that cabinet before we opened it.” The man with the pewter hair looks toward the tall man in the well-tailored suit and narrows his eyes. _He’s not buying it for some reason. Tell them something else. Make them understand that this man didn’t kill anyone._ “He couldn’t have killed anyone. He doesn’t have a weapon.”

The man in the wonderfully, impossibly tight shirt laughs. “He’s less of an idiot than you lot.” _Idiot?_ John frowns a bit. The man must notice because he adds, “No, no, no. Don’t look like that. Practically everyone is.” _Oh, sure, that makes it better._

“Ok, maybe he doesn’t have a weapon, but _you_ do.” The bearded man stares pointedly at John’s cane, hanging all but forgotten in the hand at his side.

Before John can develop a way to refute that line of thought, the man with the porcelain skin cuts in again. “He obviously didn’t kill this man either. There are no marks to indicate that he was attacked with a cane or any other kind of weapon. Even you should be able to see that much, Anderson.”

Finally getting past his initial shock and confusion with this entire situation, John comes back to himself, and his brain kicks into doctor mode. He drops to a crouch and carefully examines the body. He can feel eight eyes on him still, but he ignores them as he checks for various signs and symptoms and then pushes back to his feet. “Cardiac arrest,” he says definitively.

The woman apparently named Donovan opens her mouth to speak, but the man with the gloriously exposed patch of pale chest gets there first, his kaleidoscopic eyes alight with something that looks like interest. “You’re a doctor.” He raises one dark eyebrow at John. “An army doctor.” _Intrigued. Yes. He’s definitely intrigued._ John flushes slightly at the thought and nods. The hint of a smile crosses the other man’s lips, and John finds himself smiling back. _I wonder what his face looks like when he really smiles. I bet his whole face lights up, the same way his eyes lit up just now when he realized I’m a doctor. It would be radiant._

Distantly, John hears someone clear their throat and realizes that he’s been staring. They both have. He reluctantly turns his face toward the sound of Donovan’s voice. “Right, well, pardon us if we don’t take your word for it, _doctor_.” She emphasizes the last word with obvious sarcasm. The man named Anderson pulls out a pair of blue, nitrile gloves and moves carefully toward the body. Donovan throws one last glare at John and the man with the most delightful Cupid’s bow before she heads for the front door.

The third police officer, who hasn’t said anything since he stumbled to a halt mid-sentence when the three first entered the room, scowls suspiciously at the pair of them. His clenched jaw works in tight circles. Finally, he sighs heavily and barks, “You two. Outside. Now,” as he turns to leave.

John casts a glance at the other man, expecting to see the kind of imperious defiance he’d thrown at Donovan and Anderson, but instead he looks resigned and maybe even a little ashamed. _Why would he be ashamed?_ He sweeps from the room, and John has no choice but to follow.


	5. Third Time's the Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not posting this chapter last week, but I got caught up in all the shspesh promo pic & SDCC clip madness and never got around to it. To make up for it, I'm posting two chapters today. The second one's a bit short, but it's two chapters nonetheless. Enjoy!

Leaning against the door of Lestrade’s squad car, Sherlock huffs in impatience. _Tedious_. Lestrade has been whispering furiously at him for the better part of five minutes. “…and not only that, but that could be any one of my officers lying dead in there.”

 _Enough._ “Well, it wasn’t,” Sherlock snaps. “There’s no point in…”

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock, it could have been me!”

That cows Sherlock slightly. Lestrade may be an idiot, but he’s useful. He keeps most of the Met at bay and provides Sherlock with the cases he so desperately needs. He’s closer to being a friend than just about anyone else in Sherlock’s life is. Lestrade’s death would be… not good. “I didn’t do it intentionally.” The Detective Inspector eyes him warily. What would he believe? Something not too far from the truth. “The timer went off, but I had my gloves on. By the time I could take one off and reach for him, it was too late.”

Lestrade shakes his head in exasperation. “But why did you wake him up in the first place? We’ve discussed it. At length. You can’t do that at crime scenes.”

“Yes, I am quite capable of recalling our agreement.” Sherlock rolls his eyes. He continues, the lie coming easily, “I observed that there must have been two attackers. I intended to wake him just long enough to confirm that, but he…”

“Hit you with his cane,” Lestrade cuts in, puffing out one amused breath at the brief look of surprise on Sherlock’s face. “I can tell by the way you’re holding that shoulder. You’re not the only detective around here, right?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Wherever would you have gotten that idea?”

Lestrade laughs, and the corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirks up in response. He turns his head toward the flashing lights farther down the street. The victim is standing behind the open back doors of an ambulance, waving his hands in protest at something the paramedic is saying. Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock can see Lestrade watching him. “Why didn’t you touch him again, even after the minute was up?”

“The second suspect was already dead. Killing the victim again would serve no purpose,” Sherlock says in the most bored intonation he can manage.

A knowing grin spreads slowly over Lestrade’s face. He looks at the victim and then back at Sherlock. “’No purpose.’ Right. I see.”

“Doubtful,” Sherlock throws over his shoulder as he turns and stalks away.

“Oi! Sherlock! Get back here. I’m not done with you,” Lestrade calls after him, but Sherlock ignores the DI. He approaches the back of the ambulance in time to hear the victim vehemently refusing to go to hospital. The paramedic finally concedes, stepping away around the side of the ambulance as Sherlock smoothly glides into the space he just vacated. The victim and Sherlock stare at each other curiously for a moment. “You’re looking for a flatshare,” Sherlock states evenly.

The victim’s mouth curls in a self-deprecating smile. “Yes, but no one wants me for a flatmate apparently.”

Sherlock’s head quirks slightly to the left in an unarticulated question.

“This is the second time this week that a potential flatshare hasn’t worked out.”

“Did the first one try to kill you, too?” Sherlock deadpans. The victim gives a hearty chuckle, and Sherlock smiles—not the shamming smile he uses on others and not a small, quick smirk of amusement, but a genuine, if a bit shy, grin. The other man’s laugh fades away, but his smile doesn’t. His tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip, and Sherlock can’t help but track the slight movement with his eyes.

“I play the violin when I’m thinking. And sometimes I don’t talk for days on end.”

The victim purses his lips, his brow crinkling as he works to interpret that non-sequitur. “O… kay…”

“I’ve just moved into a nice, little place in central London. If you’re interested.”

“We’ve only just met, and you’re asking me to move into your flat?”

“Would it help if I promised that I won’t try to murder you?”

The victim laughs again. _That’s one of the most wonderful sounds I’ve ever heard._ “Yeah, a bit.” He looks Sherlock up and down, as if trying to decide whether or not he can be trusted. Eventually, he concedes, “They do say third time’s the charm.”

A tiny bud of hope blooms in Sherlock’s chest. “They do, don’t they?”

Still smiling, the other man drops his gaze to the ground and shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know your name.”

Sherlock pulls his gloves up as far as they’ll go and carefully extends a fully-covered hand. “Sherlock Holmes.”

The victim shakes his hand firmly. “John Watson.” Their linked hands steady and hold for just one extra heartbeat before they break their grasp, the soft leather of Sherlock’s black glove sliding smoothly against John’s war-roughened palm as their hands pull apart.

 _His hands are so warm. I wonder what they would feel like…_ Sherlock mentally shakes himself from continuing that line of thinking. _Pointless. We can’t touch. Ever._ A surge of despair rises up inside him at that realization, surging through his veins before he has a chance to close the gates and block it out. _Living together is undoubtedly a terrible idea. I’m going to kill him. One touch, one single touch, and he’ll be dead again._ Panic overtakes the despair. _What if we bump into each other on the stairs? What if he hands me a container of takeaway and our fingers graze each other? What if he curls up next to me on the sofa and we fall asleep, and I wake up to find my arm around his cold shoulders? What if I forget myself and kiss him, his last breath lingering on my lips?_

Sherlock’s been silent long enough that John is starting to look at him curiously. His concerned head tilt snaps Sherlock from his spiraling dread. _We’ll find a way to manage. I’ve already offered. I can’t take it back now. And I don’t really want to._ “So. Shall we go and have a look at the flat?” he says as he steps away from the ambulance and throws out an arm to flag down a passing taxi.

 _We’ll just have to be careful._ John’s shoulders shake as he chuckles, and warmth blooms through Sherlock’s body, chasing away the last bits of panic clinging stubbornly to his blood cells. _Very careful._ “You know, most people ask someone to dinner before inviting them back to their flat,” John replies.

A taxi stops and Sherlock pulls the door open. “I’m not most people.” Sherlock gestures for John to get into the back seat, and after the briefest hesitation, John does.


	6. Amazing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's a second chapter for today. It's short but sweet.

Sherlock follows John into the cab, snapping the door shut behind them. “221B Baker Street,” he tells the cabbie, and the taxi pulls smoothly clear of the curb, away from the dingy flat whose only resident is a crime scene and into the late afternoon bustle of central London.

John can’t quite make himself stop glancing and occasionally staring at his potential new flatmate. _He’s all angles and sharp lines. It seems like it shouldn’t really work, but somehow it does. It really, really does._ He knows that that isn’t reason enough to follow Sherlock home—John’s not that kind of man, not anymore at least. Back in uni, maybe. But not now. It _is_ more than that with Sherlock though, but John isn’t quite sure what that “more” is yet. _There’s just something oddly appealing about him, beyond the way he looks. I don’t know who he is at all, but I want to find out._

Sherlock’s voice rumbles into John’s consciousness. “You’ve got questions.”

 _Where to even begin?_ He settles on, “What is it that you do? You were there with the police, but I’m pretty sure you’re not a police officer.”

Unexpectedly, that makes Sherlock’s face light up with something that looks to John like pure delight. “No, certainly not a police officer,” he says with a small laugh.

When Sherlock doesn’t expand on his response, John offers, “So… You’re what? Some kind of private investigator?”

“Consulting detective,” Sherlock counters. “Only one in the world. I invented the job. I observe the things others miss, and I use my frankly considerable skills to solve cases that Lestrade and the rest of the idiots at the Met, which is all of them, cannot.”

“How does that work then? You… observe?”

“I asked you earlier, ‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’” John nods for him to continue. “I could tell that you’ve been in the military by your build, your haircut, the way your tan stops at your wrist and your collar, your reflex to put your back to the wall and keep the doorways in your line of sight when you first awoke, and your limp, though I observed later that the limp is psychosomatic—you had no problem using your cane as a weapon while standing with your weight evenly distributed on both feet, and you haven’t even noticed that you left your cane back at the crime scene.” John looks down in surprise to find that he indeed does not have his cane. _How did I not notice that? I would have celebrated finally being rid of the bloody thing._ Sherlock keeps on going without coming up for air. “So, injured, though not in the leg, and recently invalided home from military service means you served in either Afghanistan or Iraq.” Sherlock clicks the last consonant hard in the back of his mouth, and a small chill runs down John’s spine. _That shouldn’t be sexy, but Christ, it is. The observations, the way he put it all together so correctly, the way he doesn’t even have to stop to breathe, that fucking voice, that little click at the end of “Iraq”. All of it. That was…_

“Amazing,” pops out of John’s mouth before he has a chance to even think of stopping himself.

“Really?” Sherlock looks skeptical.

“Yes, of course. It was extraordinary.”

Sherlock gives him a wry smile. “Most people just tell me to piss off.”

“I’m not most people,” John retorts. Sherlock’s grin widens at his own words echoed back at him, and the last of John’s resistance to this whole weird situation just melts away. He laughs and smiles brightly back at this intriguing man. _John Watson, you are not this lucky._ _How did you manage to go from being attacked in a rundown flat to laughing in the back seat of a cab with the most interesting and bloody gorgeous man you’ve ever met?_ Almost as if he can read John’s thoughts, Sherlock gives him a quick wink before he turns his head away. Feeling lighter than he has in ages, John turns to his own window and smiles softly to himself as he watches London rush past.


	7. I Made Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got in the pool last night and just hung out in the water and read for several hours, which meant that I forgot to get on and post this latest chapter. Whoops. Someday I'll remember to get back to posting things on time...

One week later, John is moving the last of his very small number of possessions into 221B. Sherlock isn’t helping, which John has already found to be entirely unsurprising though still at least mildly irritating. Instead Sherlock’s lying on his back on the sofa with his fingers steepled together, his long index fingers pressed against his lips. He’s lost in his thoughts and seems to be entirely unaware of John’s presence. _This is going to be either the most brilliant or the dumbest idea I’ve ever had._

Once his things are all packed away in his new bedroom on the second floor, John trails back downstairs and into the kitchen-cum-laboratory to set about making tea. There’s something green growing in the sink, and John attempts to fill the kettle without disturbing whatever it is, unsure of whether or not it’s intentional. He’s only known Sherlock for seven days, but already he knows that it could be some sort of experiment on the speed at which a rare form of mold grows on household surfaces or it could just be his new flatmate’s appalling disregard for basic housekeeping.

John flips the kettle on and goes in search of two clean mugs and maybe some biscuits. He locates the mugs but can barely reach them on the top shelf of the cupboard. _We’re going to have to move these. I’m not a bloody giraffe like some people around here._ There are no biscuits to be found. The hunt for milk also proves to be fruitless. The refrigerator yields a half carton of old Thai takeaway, something that probably (maybe) (hopefully) used to be some kind of fruit, and a bag of what look an awful lot like human thumbs.

Armed with two cups of milk-less tea and a pronounced lack of biscuits, John pads into the living room and stands next to the sofa. “Sherlock.” No response. Not even a flicker of an eyelid. A little more loudly, “Sherlock.” The man on the sofa remains the very portrait of stillness. “Sherlock, sit up,” John commands, clipped and firm, slipping easily back into the role of Captain John Watson. Sherlock comes back to himself a bit and does as he’s ordered, though he still seems a little lost somewhere inside his own head. _That worked better than I expected. I’ll have to remember that._ “I made tea.” Sherlock reaches absently for the cup John’s pressing toward him. When his fingers are mere inches from the handle currently wrapped around John’s own fingers, Sherlock’s hand stills. John tilts his head in curiosity. “Something wrong?”

All at once, Sherlock’s consciousness comes rushing back to the present. His eyes snap to the cup of tea, and he snatches his hand back as if he’s been scalded. John peers into the mug and frowns. “Do you… not like tea? Or did I make it wrong? There wasn’t any milk, and I didn’t know if you took…”

“No,” Sherlock cuts in. “I like tea, and I’m sure your tea making is adequate at the least, though I obviously haven’t yet had a sample from which to test that hypothesis. I just… I don’t… We can’t… I…”

John sits down on the coffee table, not quite across from Sherlock because the space is small and their legs would be tangled together and it’s definitely too early in this _whatever this is_ for that. He places both mugs on the table, too, looks at Sherlock in calm curiosity, and waits patiently for him to marshal his thoughts into some semblance of a coherent sentence.

Finally, Sherlock manages, “John, we… we shouldn’t… touch.”

 _What? That’s an odd reaction to an offer of tea._ “Ok. That’s… fine. I wasn’t trying to… I mean… If you don’t like people to touch you, that’s fine. It’s all fine.”

“No, it’s not like that. Well, it is… a bit… I mean, it’s not really my area… but that’s not… I meant…” Sherlock growls in frustration and cards his fingers through his hair, tugging lightly when he reaches the back of his head. “We just shouldn’t touch. At all. It’s for the best.”

John struggles to keep his confusion and, if he’s honest, his disappointment off of his face. _What the hell just happened? I swear he was flirting with me when we met. He seemed interested, yeah? What happened to “an army doctor” and “I’m not most people”? How did you fuck this up already, John? You just moved in. You can’t move back out already. Fix it. Fix it somehow, you arse. Just tell him it’s fine. It’s not like you were going to try to jump him. Do you like him? Yes, of course. Did you think he liked you? Maybe. Or hoped at least. But it’s fine. It’s all fine. You can just be flatmates. Just fix this._ John takes a steadying breath to help tamp down the wave of panic cresting in his chest. “Right. Look, I wasn’t going to… touch you. I’m just your flatmate. I’m not… expecting anything here.”

“The tea, John.” John wrinkles his brow in bewilderment, and Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You were trying to hand me my tea, and my fingers almost touched yours. And we can’t. We can’t touch. Your skin and my skin. I can’t really explain why, but we just can’t,” he finishes somewhat lamely, as the merest hint of a flush creeps across his gorgeous cheekbones. _He almost seems embarrassed, and that’s not okay. So he doesn’t like people to touch him. That’s maybe a bit quirky, but he seems, well, full of quirks. It’s nothing to be ashamed of though. It’s like he thought I would make fun of… Oh. Someone else already has. He said he didn’t like to be touched—not his area—and someone else made fun of him for it._ John’s heart clenches around a burst of affection for his new flatmate.

“It’s fine, Sherlock. I’ll just be more careful in the future, okay? I won’t touch you,” John promises solemnly. Trying to lighten the mood, he adds, laughing, “I’ll even wear gloves if I have to.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen as if he’s just solved a particularly difficult puzzle. “Oh,” he breathes. _God, that mouth. No. Stop thinking like that, John. He’s just your flatmate._ Then more loudly, “Oh. John. You are a genius. Well, no, _I_ am, but you are… something. Brilliant. Amazing. Wonderful.”

“Go on then. What have I done that’s so bloody brilliant?” he asks with a wry smile. He’s confused by this conversation taking yet another turn, but he puffs up a bit under Sherlock’s praise, even if he isn’t quite sure what he’s done to warrant it.

“Gloves, John. I’ll wear my gloves.”

“You can’t be serious. Sherlock, this is your flat. You shouldn’t have to walk around your own home like…”

“No, it’s perfect. Don’t you see? I’ll keep my gloves on, and everything will be fine because we won’t accidentally touch.”

Before John can formulate a way to talk Sherlock out of having to wear gloves in his own home, the sound of footsteps on the stairs heralds the impending arrival of their landlady, Mrs. Hudson. John stands to greet her. He had met Mrs. Hudson briefly when he came to look at the flat that first day but only long enough for Sherlock to introduce him and tell her that they would need the room upstairs. She enters the open door to the sitting room and smiles at him warmly. “All settled in now, Doctor Watson?”

“John, please,” he corrects. “And yes, I brought the last of my things over this morning.”

“And I’m sure Sherlock helped plenty with that, didn’t he, dear?” she asks, staring pointedly at the man now standing at the window with his back to the room. She sighs and goes about gathering various dishes from around the flat and carrying them to the kitchen. “You relax, and let me make you a cuppa.”

“Oh, thanks, Mrs. Hudson, but I’ve actually just made one myself,” he says lifting his cup from the coffee table. He settles in a cozy, red armchair across the room and picks up today’s newspaper, which is splashed with a glaring headline about a recent string of suicides.

“Sherlock Holmes, you went out and found someone else to make you tea?” she teases.

Sherlock turns away from the window and gives her a small, affectionate smile. “Well someone has to do it when you’re away at your sisters.”

She shakes a dish towel at him and then says more seriously, “You boys make a lovely couple.”

“We’re not a couple,” John protests.

Mrs. Hudson continues as if he hadn’t. “My husband and I were just the same. He never could be bothered to even learn to work the kettle.”

She settles into a story about her husband’s inability to make tea or something, but John doesn’t hear a word of it. _We’re not a couple. Did he tell her we’re a couple? We’re not. I mean, he was flirting with me the day we met, or at least I thought he was. That doesn’t make us a couple though. Wait, does he think we’re a couple? Oh, no, he just said all that about not touching, so no… but… Why does she think we’re a couple?_ John tries to look to Sherlock for answers, but he has already turned back to the window, intently watching something unfold on the street below.

Mrs. Hudson is still telling her story and bustling about like their housekeeper—though she insisted more than once when John first met her that she was just their landlady—when John hears someone rapidly open and close the main door on the ground floor and then trot up the stairs two at a time. Before the police officer from last week _(What did Sherlock say his name was? Lestrade, right?)_ can step fully onto the first floor landing, Sherlock asks, “Where?”

“Brixton. Lauriston Gardens.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

John doesn’t miss the quick, wary glance the DI throws John’s way before he responds, “Will you come?”

“What’s new about this one? You obviously didn’t intend to bring me in on this case, so something’s different this time or you wouldn’t be here now.”

“This one left a note.”

“Sorry. Who left a note?” John interjects, not quite following the conversation.

“Serial suicides,” Sherlock explains, nodding to the paper in John’s hand. “There’s been a fourth one.” He turns back to Lestrade. “Who’s on forensics?”

“Anderson.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and scoffs. “I’m not using Anderson as an assistant.”

“What other choice do you have?”

Sherlock’s gaze bounces unseeing around the room as he searches for some kind of answer to Lestrade’s question. John watches him curiously, and suddenly Sherlock’s eyes find his own, one corner of his mouth curling up a millimeter or two. “John.”

“What?” John asks at the same time Lestrade blurts out a firm, “No.”

Sherlock continues, approaching John where he’s seated near the fireplace and ignoring Lestrade’s refusal entirely, “You’re an army doctor. You’ve seen a lot of injuries then. Violence. Death. Trouble. Danger.” It isn’t a question, but John nods anyway. Sherlock’s eyes sparkle mischievously, and John’s heart beats faster. He almost feels like he could fly with Sherlock looking at him like that. “Do you want to see some more?”

Lestrade spits, “Absolutely not, Sherlock,” as John breathes out, “God, yes.” He and Sherlock smile at each other for a moment, completely lost in their own world, before reality settles back in. “But,” John says as his grin fades, “I’ve a job interview this afternoon.” Sherlock’s face falls back into a placid mask, and John’s heart breaks a little at having to be the one to make that smile disappear. “It’s at a surgery just up the road a bit. I could come by when I’m done there though,” he adds hopefully.

“Fine,” Sherlock says flatly, and John feels like he’s somehow disappointed him.

“I mean, I want to come. I just, you know, need a job, money, all that.”

“Money is boring.”

“Maybe, but I’d be a rubbish flatmate if I can’t even pay my half the rent. I’ll just text you when I’m done, okay? You can let me know where you are, and I’ll meet you there.” Lestrade scowls at them both, and John adds, “If that’s alright with you, Detective Insepctor.”

Lestrade opens his mouth to respond but Sherlock cuts in before he can make a sound, throwing a pointed look at the DI. “Of course it’s alright. You need me, Lestrade.”

The DI huffs out a heavy breath and runs his fingers through his short hair. “God help me I do,” he says resignedly.

“Well, now that we’ve settled that…” Sherlock waves a hand vaguely toward the stairs, a clear sign of dismissal. “I’ll meet you there.” Lestrade looks for a minute as if he might say something else, but in the end he shakes his head at the both of them before tramping off down the stairs and out the front door.

Sherlock dramatically swirls his coat around his shoulders and slips his arms into the sleeves. John finds himself staring as Sherlock ties a blue scarf around his long neck. John comes back to himself to find that Sherlock is watching him with one eyebrow raised and the barest hint of a smile playing across his lips. “Um, are… are you sure it’s okay if I come to the crime scene later?” John asks.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, first off, Lestrade didn’t exactly look thrilled at the prospect.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“But, second, Sherlock… I don’t really know what you expect from me. I mean, you’re, well, frankly you’re brilliant.” John doesn’t fail to notice that Sherlock stands the tiniest bit taller at his words. “And I don’t really know how you expect me to help you. I don’t know anything about… all this. Murder. Crime scenes. Observing.”

“Come now, John. You’re a doctor, are you not? A wealth of medical expertise. Certainly even you can see how useful you would be to me.”

John chuckles lightly at the odd praise. “Useful, am I?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes in feigned exasperation. “Well, _someone_ has to open doors for me.” The corner of his mouth cracks upward as if his face just can’t help giving away his amusement, and John is almost certain that Sherlock is flirting with him again. It’s confusing and delightful all at once.

“Well, good to know where I stand,” John teases. “Shouldn’t you be, you know, running off to solve a crime or something? I’ll text you after my interview and see if you need any help opening doors. Maybe I’ll even offer to hold your coat, if you’re lucky.”


	8. Rachel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't entirely forgotten about this fic, I swear, but I have been working on lots of other things lately, too. Updates for this one are going to be slow going for a while, especially now that the fall semester is starting and I'll be in classes again (in addition to continuing to work full-time). I'll update when I can. Thanks for sticking with it. <3

PING

Sherlock’s text alert sounds particularly loud echoing off the bare walls and cold steel slabs of the morgue.

“What was that?” the blonde woman in front of him asks.

“Nothing,” he says irritably. “Continue.”

“Where was I?”

“Rachel. I asked you about Rachel.”

PING

Sherlock huffs in frustration.

“Do you need to get that?” she asks.

“No.”

“Could be important.”

“Ignore it. Rachel. Now,” Sherlock commands.

“Oh, right,” she begins but shifts uncomfortably before she continues. “Rachel’s my daughter.” She pauses and her gaze falls to the floor for just a moment. When she looks back up at Sherlock, her eyes are starting to take on a rather wet sheen. _Dull._ “She was…” She stalls again, and Sherlock tsks in impatience. The victim gathers her courage a bit before finally admitting, “She was stillborn.”

“And why were you writing her name on the floor?”

“Oh. That. Right. Rachel’s my…”

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

“Oh for God’s sake,” Sherlock growls. He taps Jennifer Wilson on the forehead with his bare middle finger, and she collapses awkwardly back on to the table. He arranges her limbs back into a close approximation of their previous positions wishing for the thousandth time that his ability didn’t come with such a short time limit. Then he slides out the door of the morgue, pulling on his gloves as he walks out of St. Bart’s to find a taxi.

He hadn’t gotten all of the information that he needed out of the victim—when he woke her, she had accepted that she had died easily enough but hadn’t been very quick to provide answers to his questions—but he at least had more information than he had started with. _Killer was a taxi driver. Grey hair. Hat. No name or other solid identification information. Picked her up near Paddington Station. Drove her to Brixton. Held her at gunpoint and forced her to choose one of two bottles of pills. She swallowed a pill from the bottle she chose, and he took one from the other. One poison, one placebo. She scratched Rachel into the floor as she was dying. Rachel’s her stillborn daughter, but why scratch her name into the floor? Why?_

As Sherlock slides into the cab that has materialized in front of him, he slips his mobile from his pocket and turns on the screen to find that the texts that had interrupted his minute with the victim are from John.

**All done here. Heading back to the flat to change, and then I can meet you if you still need help.**

**Or did you find someone else useful to, I don’t know, fetch you coffee or something?**

Sherlock quickly taps out a reply.

**_Find someone useful at NSY? Doubtful. Besides, I wouldn’t trust any of them not to poison something I was intending to drink. SH_ **

John’s response comes quite quickly. _Passing the time while sitting in a cab or on the Tube then._

**Yeah, I noticed that Anderson and Donovan didn’t seem to like you much. Why is that?**

_Might as well be honest._

**_I suppose it’s because I’m a rude, unpleasant, obnoxious arsehole who can do their jobs far better than they can. SH_ **

**Well, we can’t all be perfect, can we? :P**

Sherlock can’t help the chuckle that escapes from his throat, even as he rolls his eyes at the little face that punctuates John’s text.

**_John, please tell me you did not just send me an emoticon. I didn’t realize my new flatmate was a 13-year-old girl texting her BFF. SH_ **

**Oi. Watch it, or you’re going to go back to having no flatmate.**

The smile on Sherlock’s face drops away. _Is he joking? He must be joking. Why is it so hard to tell from a text whether or not someone is joking? He can’t leave already. He can’t. He just moved in. How did you manage to mess this up already? You should’ve just kept your mouth shut at that crime scene. You didn’t have to invite him to live with you. And now he has, but you’ve already run him off again._ Sherlock can feel himself slipping into a panic, but he can’t seem to stop it. His phone pings again to let him know that John has sent another text. He hesitates, unsure if he really wants to know what it says. When it pings once more, he pulls in a slightly shaky breath and forces himself to read the messages.

**Kidding. This flat is too much nicer than my old one for me to leave that easily. You’ll have to murder me if you want rid of me. ;)**

**And yes, that was another emoticon.**

Sherlock coughs out a relieved laugh, and then he laughs more at his own ridiculousness at having panicked in the first place. _You’ve just met. Why are you letting yourself get so attached? You know this is why Mycroft always warns you about sentiment. You think for one second that a man you hardly know might not want to live with you and you nearly go into hysterics. Control. You need to get yourself under control._

**So, this case... do you want me to meet you somewhere or not?**

**_I just left the morgue. I’ll meet you back at the flat. SH_ **

**Alright. See you there.**

Sherlock puts his phone away and forces his thoughts back to the case, but when the taxi pulls up in front of 221B and he shuffles out, he is no closer to any answers than he had been when he left Bart’s. He climbs the stairs to the flat and finds John in the armchair he seems to have claimed as his own. “Why would a woman think of her stillborn daughter as she’s dying?” he asks as he hangs up his coat and scarf.

As Sherlock’s question settles into his brain, John throws Sherlock an incredulous look.

“Not good?” Sherlock asks.

“Bit not good, yeah,” John admits.

Sherlock hurries to explain. “The victim scratched her daughter’s name into the floor with her fingernail before she died. Well, tried to. She didn’t finish. But she was definitely writing her daughter’s name, Rachel. The murderer had likely left by then, as he didn’t stop her…”

“Murderer?” John asks. “I thought these were suicides.”

“Definitely murder. Victims were forced to ingest poison at gunpoint. Made to look like suicide. Not important right now.”  Sherlock waives an impatient hand in John’s direction. “Why did she go through the effort? It would’ve hurt, so she must have done it for a reason.”

“A message.” John shrugs. “She’s trying to tell someone something. It’s a… clue of some sort.”

“Sound analysis, John, but I _was_ hoping you’d go deeper.”

“I’m not the Consulting Detective here, Sherlock,” John counters tetchily. They both lapse into silence, lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, John tries again. “If she knew she was dying… I mean, if she knew specifically that she was being murdered, maybe she was trying to tell us something about who killed her.” It comes out more as a question than a statement.

 _It’s an intriguing thought, but…_ “The killer was a cabbie. Male. I suppose it’s possible his name could be Rachel—could be a last name instead—but it’s highly unlikely that the victim would have known his name at all.” Sherlock knows for a fact that the victim didn’t know the killer’s name—he had asked her after all—but he can’t exactly tell John that.

“Oh. Right,” John concedes before slipping back into thoughtful silence.

Sherlock needs to think, so he throws himself across the sofa and steeples his hands together under his chin. It almost looks like he’s praying, except the only higher power Sherlock believes in is the power of his own brain, and there’s really no point in praying to himself. He sorts through the evidence, walking himself back through the crime scene that he has reconstructed in his mind while considering the brief testimony of the victim.

“Sherlock.” He hears John call his name somewhere beyond the veil that separates him from the waking world. Judging by the tone, it isn’t the first time John has called to him either. He opens his eyes to find the doctor standing next to the sofa with one arm outstretched as if to shake him awake. Sherlock pushes himself away from John’s hand in dawning horror, and John pulls away, too, suddenly realizing his error. “Right. No touching. Sorry. I forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says with false casualness. _Maybe I need to make him wear gloves, too._

“Okay… I, um… I was just saying that it’s about dinner time. Are there any takeout places nearby? I could order us something, walk down and pick it up, seeing as you don’t really seem to need me here at the moment.”

“Don’t eat when I’m working. Digesting slows me down.”

“That’s not exactly medically sound logic, Sherlock,” John says with a small scowl. “But either way, _I’m_ hungry. If you don’t want to eat right now, that’s your business. But at least tell me the name of a decent restaurant nearby so that I can go get something for me to eat. I don’t really know this part of London that well yet, but I can put it in the GPS on my phone and…”

“Oh,” Sherlock exhales, realization slamming into him at breakneck speed. He pulls his mobile from his pocket and hastily texts Lestrade, a grin spreading over his face as pieces of the puzzle click into place. He stands up and paces back and forth in front of the desk while he waits for a response. “John, you might not be a genius, but you certainly have a way of inspiring it in others.” John looks somewhat unsure of whether he should be insulted or flattered, but when Sherlock gives him a brief, genuine smile, he seems to come down on the side of flattered

“Alright then. Tell me what you’ve figured out, genius.”

Sherlock’s phone pings to announce the arrival of Lestrade’s reply. He takes a seat at the desk and pulls John’s laptop toward him, opening it and pressing a button to bring it whirring to life. The login screen washes his face in blue light. He looks John up and down for a moment, calculating, before turning back to the screen and typing 8 characters into the password field. John only realizes what’s happened when his own desktop background appears on the screen. “That’s mine,” he snaps as he hastily snatches the laptop away from Sherlock. “And _how_ did you even manage that?” He sounds exasperated but there’s still a hint of wonderment underneath it all, as if he can’t help but be amazed at Sherlock’s abilities, even when the detective is using said abilities to break into his computer.

“Based on your military background and the fact that you only password-protected your laptop since moving in here—no need to have a password on your laptop when you live alone—it wasn’t exactly difficult to deduce.”

John shakes his head at Sherlock, but there isn’t much ire in it. “You could just ask, you know, if you want to use my things.” Sherlock _hmm_ s at him noncommittally. Resigned to his fate, John passes the laptop back to him with a sigh but stands watch over his shoulder. Sherlock navigates to the website for Mephone, a mobile phone service provider, and enters the email address he had asked Lestrade to text him. “What exactly are you doing?” John asks curiously.

“The victim’s business card was amongst the personal effects found on her body. Based on her email address,” he says, gesturing to where the screen says jennie.pink@mephone.org.uk in the login box, “we know she must have had a mobile phone, but it wasn’t in her possession when she died.”

“She could have left it at home,” John suggests.

“No. She had a string of lovers and was careful to hide it from her husband, so she would never have left her phone at home. But it wasn’t on the body. So where is it?”

“She could have lost it.”

“Or…”

Realization dawns in John’s eyes. “The murderer…” Sherlock feels a twinge of pride that John has caught on so quickly.

“Exactly. Either she left it in the taxi by accident or the murderer took it from her, but either way she knew that he had her phone.”

“Ok, so he has her phone. How does that help us? We could call it, I suppose, but…”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You said it yourself, John. She was trying to tell us something about her murderer, more specifically how to find him. She obviously has an online account for her phone, which is most likely a smartphone. GPS-enabled. Therefore we can use her account to track her phone. The username is her email address and the password is…”

“Rachel,” John finishes for him. Sherlock smirks at the screen as he types in the password, pleased with John’s ability to think through the case with just a little push in the right direction. Jennifer Wilson’s account information pops up on the screen. “Fantastic,” John whispers.

“Do you know you do that out loud?” Sherlock asks as he clicks on the link to begin tracking the victim’s phone.

“Oh. Sorry,” John says, flushing slightly.

“No, it’s… fine,” Sherlock responds, turning to catch John’s eye. They hold each other’s gaze and something electric seems to spark in the air between them. Sherlock can feel himself being drawn irrevocably toward John, caught up in his effortless praise and easy laughter, his thus far brief-but-noteworthy flashes of intelligence and of courage, his warm smile and his seascape eyes.

Something in Sherlock’s brain warns him of danger and he realizes that he’s ever so slowly leaning in toward John, a corporeal manifestation of the metaphorical pull he feels. Reminding himself of the physical limitations of whatever this is that seems to be growing between them, Sherlock pushes himself away and turns his eyes back to the laptop screen. An address pops up on the screen, along with a corresponding dot on the map. “Let’s go,” Sherlock says, snapping the lid down on the laptop and carrying it with him toward the door.

“Hang on. We’re just going to go chasing after a murderer?”

“Problem?”

“Isn’t that, you know, dangerous?”

“Could be,” Sherlock states simply as he wraps himself in his coat and scarf.

John absorbs that thought for a moment and then comes to some kind of conclusion. He grabs his coat from the hook on the wall. “Be right back,” he calls as he trots up the stairs to his room. He returns after a few seconds, pulling his arm through the sleeve of his jacket. Sherlock looks at him curiously, but John just nods and continues down to the front door. He holds it open, and the two of them step out into the crisp air of a February night.


	9. In Bed

“Hold on,” John says as Sherlock reaches across the table. “Let’s hear it.”

Sherlock’s hand stills, and he looks at John in confusion. “Hear what?”

“You said you can predict the fortune cookies. Predict away, Nostradamus,” John laughs.

“Ah. Yes.” Sherlock finishes reaching for a cookie and makes a show of examining the packaging before carefully tearing it open. He places the cookie in his palm and holds it up to eye-level, squinting at it in meticulous scrutiny. In the dim light of the restaurant, those eyes are a steely grey, sharp and keen as they take in whatever details are to be found on the surface of a fortune cookie.

John had known his evening would be full of surprises when Sherlock had asked him to go chasing after a murderer—that’s why he’d gone up to his room to get his gun after all—but he could never have anticipated that he would end up at a Chinese restaurant on Baker Street at 1 AM pleasantly stuffed with the best dim sum he’s ever tasted and joking around with Sherlock, after having killed a cabbie to save the idiotic genius from poisoning himself. The danger he actually could have predicted; he’d been living with Sherlock for less than a day now, and already he could see that he would be spending a lot of his free time looking out for his new flatmate. The easy laughter and companionship that had followed the danger, however, hadn’t been quite so expected. People don’t typically shoot taxi drivers and then go on with their evenings as if it was all par for the course, but as he has to keep reminding himself, neither he nor Sherlock are really what most would consider normal.

“This one is going to be some meaningless drivel about love or happiness. Hmmm…” Sherlock thinks for a moment and then with complete confidence declares, “‘Love is the only true adventure.’” He rolls his eyes dramatically, and John can’t help but laugh again.

“Whoever said that apparently hasn’t ever helped you catch a murderer,” John retorts, his eyes twinkling with barely contained and perhaps somewhat inappropriate glee. He should probably be ashamed that he’s enjoyed his evening so thoroughly, but in all honesty this is the best he’s felt in a long time and he can’t be arsed to care what anyone else would think about that, though he certainly won’t be sharing any of this with his therapist. _Christ knows what she’d have to say about this._ Perhaps it’s just due to the shared adrenaline high and subsequent euphoric haze that the resolution of the case has brought on, or perhaps it’s something more, but John feels as if somehow everything has suddenly slid into place in his life. _Without a doubt, there is no place on earth I would rather be tonight._

“Alright. Do mine. Then we can open them and see how wrong you are.”

Sherlock is facetiously affronted, but still he picks up John’s fortune cookie and subjects it to the same examination before predicting, “’A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’”

John holds out his hand and Sherlock gingerly places the cookie in his upturned palm, careful not to touch him. John nods his head toward the first fortune cookie. “You first.”

Sherlock breaks his cookie in half with a satisfying snap, small crumbs falling between his long fingers and onto his nearly empty plate. He reads aloud, “Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

“In bed,” John adds.

Sherlock’s eyes snap to John’s and his brow crinkles. “What?”

“In bed,” John repeats, and Sherlock continues to look at him warily. “You haven’t played that game before? Well, I guess it’s not really a game, but… When you read your fortune, you’re supposed to add ‘in bed’ to the end of it.”

“Why?” Sherlock asks, genuinely confused.

“It’s funny,” John offers with a shrug. “What was it? ‘Our brightest… whatever… are kindled by unexpected sparks’ in bed.” He chuckles, but Sherlock just looks back down at the fortune thoughtfully. When he doesn’t say anything else, John quiets and worries that he’s said something wrong.

Before he can try to smooth things over, however, Sherlock looks back up at him and smiles placidly. “Your turn. Let’s see what’s in store for you _in bed_.” Sherlock’s eyebrow quirks in mock lasciviousness— _is it entirely fake though?_ —and just like that, John’s unease is gone again, the good humor they’ve shared throughout dinner returning in full force. He’s again unsure of whether or not Sherlock is actually flirting with him, but he’s in too good of a mood to really care.

John cracks into his fortune cookie and pulls out the small slip of paper that’s trying to teach him the Chinese translation of bedroom, of all things (wo shi, apparently). He turns it over and reads aloud, “You cannot love life until you live the life you love. In bed.” They both snicker, and John adds, “Well, that’s not entirely true, is it, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.”

“I wouldn’t really know,” slips out of Sherlock’s mouth before he realizes what he’s said. He suddenly becomes very interested in the small bit of leftover lo mein on his plate.

John looks at him in mild surprise. “You mean, you’ve never…”

Sherlock glances at him and then quickly back to his plate, absently pushing a few noodles around with his chopsticks. Eventually he huffs anxiously and looks John in the eye before he says, “No.” There’s something open and vulnerable and uncertain in his eyes. It makes John want to reach out and touch Sherlock in some sort of comforting gesture. He’s reminded of their earlier conversation about touching and has the innate feeling that Sherlock has been made fun of for this, too. It makes John want to reach out even more, but he doesn’t because Sherlock wouldn’t like that. _Just say something comforting instead._

“Right. Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know that,” Sherlock snaps. _Apparently that wasn’t it. Well done, John._ The brief moment of vulnerability vanishes, and Sherlock’s more typical aloofness slides back into its place. “I’m not ashamed. All I’m interested in is the work. That’s what matters. It’s why I’m useful. My brain is the important part. Everything else is just transport.”

“You’re kidding, right?” John asks incredulously.

“Kidding? Why would I be kidding?” Sherlock sneers.

“You honestly think that the only thing that matters is how useful you are, how many puzzles you solve?” Sherlock glares at John but says nothing. “I mean, yes, you’re bloody brilliant, Sherlock, but that’s not the only reason people like you.”

“People _don’t_ like me,” Sherlock starts, winding up for a good rant and growing louder as he continues. “I’m a sarcastic, ill-mannered know-it-all who likes to show off. Most of the words out of my mouth are dismissive at best or caustic and downright cruel at worst. I am haughty and impatient and condescending. As Sally Donovan is so fond of mentioning, I am a freak. The only reason anyone puts up with me is because they need my help. As I said, people. Don’t. Like me.”

“Wrong.” That gets Sherlock’s attention.

“I’m not,” he argues.

“You are,” John tells him firmly. “I like you.”

Sherlock stares at John in disbelief. John smiles pleasantly back at him. After a minute, Sherlock sighs wearily, breathing out some of his tension along with it. “You don’t even know me, John,” he says, the barest hint of sadness creeping into his voice.

“True. I don’t know you very well. _Yet_. But that doesn’t make any difference. I like you, and not just because you’re a crime-solving genius.” He lets his smile grow into something warmer and fonder, and the corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches upward by the tiniest bit. “Come on. Let’s go home. I’m exhausted. Can’t imagine why.”

 

They make the short walk back to the flat in companionable silence. _It’s been a good night, murderers aside._ John can’t help the small grin that’s still plastered on his face, and out of the corner of his eye, he catches Sherlock throwing him furtive glances, his own lips curled into a slight, tentative smile, too.

Back home, they hang up their coats and climb the stairs to 221B. John starts to feel the waves of fatigue crashing over him, but he pauses on the landing, not wanting the enjoyable evening to end quite yet but unsure of how to extend it.

Sherlock moves to step into the sitting room, and John says, “Sherlock, I…” He stops, unsure of how that statement was supposed to end; all he knows is that he doesn’t want to part just yet. Sherlock turns back to him, looking at him expectantly. _If this were a date, this is where I’d snog him and ask him if he wanted to come up for a drink._ A small giggle bursts out of John’s mouth. Sherlock quirks an eyebrow at him, and John bites down on his bottom lip to try to stop any more laughter from escaping. “Sorry. It’s just… This kind of feels like the end of a date.” He can’t help himself and giggles again. “I mean, I know it’s not,” he adds hurriedly. “But, well… nevermind. I’m just tired. Bit loopy. Ignore me. I’m going to head to bed. Good night, Sherlock.”

John turns to head up the stairs to his room, when he feels a gentle weight on his shoulder. He turns back and is pleasantly surprised when Sherlock squeezes his shoulder lightly, his eyes crinkling softly as he says, “Good night, John.”

John climbs the rest of the way to his room, changes into his pajamas, and buries himself in the warm cocoon of his bed. His last thoughts before sleep pulls him under are of kaleidoscopic eyes, slight smiles, and the warm pressure of a single, gloved hand. _A very good night indeed._


End file.
